Rationale for People of Colour work throughout St Osmund’s
Be proud of the skin you are in.
We should be able to be transparent about culture and race to protect everyone. In society there is fear of being called racist and well as fear of being seen as demonstrably racist.
We do not want to be a ‘colour-blind’ school where we don’t talk about race and we treat everyone the same; we have to accept that the experience of a student of colour will be different to that of a white student. We will not erase the experience they bring. We will have conversations about what it means to be white, black, Asian and of other and multi-heritage. We will celebrate all identities, including white identity, culture and heritage. We will develop a humane, inclusive community.
Research shows us that up to and including age 11, children make friends readily and easily across racial groups. At every year beyond age 11 this changes and becomes increasingly less so. We seek to tackle early bias and talk openly in order to tackle systemic inequalities before they happen.
We recognise that there is typically an unconscious bias towards Caucasian/white people in majority white communities. We want our students to be proud of the skin they are in. We want our students to be able to find positive examples of people who look like them within the curriculum and within our school’s reach. We want to take a proactive approach to increase the confidence of any minority within our student population and we don’t want this to be left to chance. We want to support actively anti-racist thinking.
